She had a nickname for me: Kallu, meaning Blackie. She asked Mohsin, ‘Why does this Kallu accompany you everywhere? Is he your friend?’ When he replied in the affirmative stating that I was a very good friend of his, she did not object to my accompanying him. This continued well until the twelfth grade, after which each of us went our separate ways to separate colleges.
We are still friends today, though these days I am so busy that I am mostly unable to take his calls. It seems like I was a jackass allowing Mohsin all along to use me so selfishly. But I felt privileged having a friend like him, because of his background, especially in Budhana. He had studied at the local Montessori school, which had been my dream. He came from a wealthy, well-educated and cultured family. His uncles were engineers and doctors. I felt proud walking next to him.
While I went to Haridwar to study science, Mohsin went to Bangalore to study engineering. Unlike me, he had not procured his seat at his institute based on merit but through donation. Whenever we visited our homes in Budhana, everybody used to praise him and he was highly respected for studying engineering. Meanwhile, I was studying at the National School of Drama (NSD) in Delhi. People did not know its value and immediately concluded that I was useless.
Later, however, Mohsin’s mind dulled. He lost his job and could not find another. So he sold off his share of his family’s property and moved to Muzaffarnagar with his wife and two kids. He is not doing too well economically. Nowadays, he sticks to any builder who finds plots and makes apartments, in the hope of getting some money through these projects.
8Nani ka Ghar
With today’s roads and private cars, Nani’s house is a short, smooth ride away from Budhana. But back then, my maternal grandmother seemed to live a hundred miles away. To go to her village, we had to take a bus from our village to the next kasba. From there, we would hop on to a tonga to Nani ka Ghar. The galloping of the horses had a wonderful, soothing percussion-like rhythm to it, like a slightly louder version of a clock’s constant tick-tock. It took well over half a day to reach Bilojpura, on the outskirts of which was her house. From there, we would board another tonga to Tatteri, then get off that one and board yet another tonga to her house. So we would leave slightly before or around the crack of dawn, often at around five in the morning depending on the season, and reach her place by three or four in the afternoon.
Nana, my maternal grandfather, was an imam with a classic imam-like beard, which was long, strawy and swayed ever so slightly in the breeze. He always sat on a charpoy outside with a paandan stuffed with paan and an ugaaldan, a spittoon for the bloody betel juice. Whenever we went, he would greet us with a ‘Salaam wale kum’. And he would pull me towards him, saying, ‘Ab idhar aa.’ (Now you come here.) Then very stealthily, he would dig out a treasure from his secret stash under his pillow and place it on my palm. ‘Don’t tell anybody!’ he would quickly add in a wispy voice balancing the paan in his mouth. ‘Now go!’ I’d look at the chavanni in my hand with the thrill of an athlete who has won a gold medal. Back then, 25 paise brought many possibilities with it, ranging from candy to crackers. As I cantered away with this token of his love, I knew that I was his favourite grandchild and he loved me the most. He might give money to other children, but at the most it would be 5 paise, and that too, only if he had to. But I always got the most money.
Nani’s three sons lived in her house. In other words, I had three mamas. My khalas, aunts, of which there were half a dozen, came in various sizes. The entire village knew of this house because Nana was an imam. Every time we went to weddings or anywhere else, passers-by who were complete strangers to me, would ask, ‘Are you Mehrun’s?’ When I nodded, they would also nod, satisfied with this validation of themselves by themselves.
‘All right, all right. Good, good,’ they’d say, putting all kinds of presents in my hands as tokens of their affection.
‘Here, take this milk.’ And I’d be handed a heavy steel canister with over two litres of fresh buffalo milk in it. Sometimes it would be fruits. Ammi had taught me not to accept anything but they would force me sentimentally until I surrendered. I’d hand these gifts over to Nani in fear, apologizing profusely and defending myself that I had refused multiple times but they wouldn’t budge.
While Ammi might have been furious, Nani would break into a big smile and say, ‘So what? Achcha hi hai na, kyon?’ (It’s good only, right?) I was thoroughly confused. I did not understand then that being the imam at the local mosque, they were used to being showered with tokens of affection pretty much every day.
Moreover, somewhere between 150 and 250 children studied in the madrasa under Nana’s tutelage. So appreciation came both in kind and words from their parents. For a while I too studied in a madrasa, which is why I am fluent in Arabic.
One of my mamus, the middle one whom I called Takki Mamu, was an incredibly interesting man and an avid movie buff. I was about ten years old when I began accompanying him to the cinema. Those days, walking many kilometres was no big deal—it was a common thing. We used to easily walk seven–eight kilometres to a neighbouring village, which was big enough to
